Freedom House, Inc. is a non-profit organization that relies upon tax-deductible grants and donations under Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code. Corporate researcher Holly Sklar (1989) described it as a "conservative research, publishing, networking, and selective human rights organization." Freedom House's work is linked to the "democracy promotion" efforts of the National Endowment for Democracy.

The organization was founded by Wendell Willkie, Eleanor Roosevelt, George Field, Dorothy Thompson, Herbert Bayard Swope, and others in 1941.

Since the 9/11 attacks and the onset of the "war on terror," Freedom House has devoted considerable energy to assessing the impact of "radical Islam" both in and outside the United States and advocating policies in many countries that have been the focus of the George W. Bush administration's anti-terror campaign

Freedom House's March 2003 "Statement on the Iraq War" underscored this shift in looking at Islamic countries. The statement repeated a core claim of the Bush administration—that the Iraq War will help create democratic reform throughout the Middle East

While touting itself as having a "bipartisan character," Freedom House is often associated with hawkish and neoconservative factions within both major U.S. parties, a fact made clear by many of its current and past supporters and board members, which have included former CIA Director James Woolsey, ex-Reagan administration official Kenneth Adelman, the late UN Amb. Jeane Kirkpatrick, and former member of the Committee on the Present Danger, Max Kampelman.

Other board members have included the conservative Rolling Stone writer P.J. O'Rourke; Samuel Huntington, a Harvard professor who says the post-Cold War period will be dominated by a "clash of civilizations" between the Muslim and Christian worlds; Ruth Wedgwood, a right-leaning human rights lawyer; and Arthur Waldron, a longtime foreign policy hawk who has been a leading advocate for a hardline China policy.

Many of these individuals have also supported the work of a number of other conservative organizations, including the Project for the New American Century, the Center for Security Policy, and the American Enterprise Institute. Other Freedom House supporters and scholars have included Mark Falcoff, the late Penn Kemble, Nina Shea , and Daniel Pipes.

Observers have raised serious concerns about the group's fairness and objectivity for decades. During the Reagan administration, Freedom House was criticized for serving as a U.S. propaganda instrument, supporting the death squad-linked ARENA party in El Salvador while attacking the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, championing Contra leaders like Arturo Cruz, and serving as a conduit for funds from the National Endowment for Democracy

Freedom House is a nonprofit organization. It is predominantly funded by the United States government and is headquartered in Washington, D.C., It has field offices in about a dozen countries, including Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Jordan, Mexico, and a number of countries in Central Asia.

The group has also served as an umbrella organization for a number of more specialized groups, like the Center for Religious Freedom led by Carol Adelman (now based at the neoconservative Hudson Institute) and the now-defunct American Committee for Peace in Chechnya.

It is controlled by a Board of Trustees, which it describes as composed of 'business and labor leaders, former senior government officials, scholars, writers, and journalists'. While some board members were born outside the United States, and many have been affiliated with international groups, all are current residents of the United States. It does not identify itself with either of the American Republican or the Democratic parties.

The board is currently chaired by Peter Ackerman. Ackerman took over chairmanship of the board in September of 2005 from former CIA director James Woolsey.

Freedom House is funded by a number of foundations, including Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Soros Foundation. It also receives funding from the US Government through the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and the State Department. Around 75% of its income is US federal grants.

Justin Raimundo, a libertarian who is editorial director of the popular website Antiwar.com, has written of the group's freedom reports: "The U.S. government-funded organization known as 'Freedom House' has recently delivered a Christmas present to Russian President Vladimir Putin: his country has been downgraded, from 'partially free' to 'not free.' Israel, of course, is deemed completely 'free,' in spite of treating its Arab subjects worse than Sparta ever treated its helots. Putin is no Jeffersonian democrat, but neither has he rounded up and imprisoned an entire people and sought to ethnically cleanse them from their homeland. Freedom House standards are elastic, bending to the dictates of American foreign policy"

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